It belongs to a category of earthwork found across Ireland, where raised ground of artificial or uncertain origin has been noted, mapped, and given a monument number, yet remains without a detailed public account of what it is or how it came to be.

Mounds of this kind can represent many things. Some are burial mounds, raised over the dead during the Bronze Age or earlier, their interiors sometimes containing cremated remains, stone cists, or grave goods. Others are the eroded remnants of Norman mottes, the flat-topped earthen platforms on which timber towers once stood. Still others began as natural features and were later shaped or used by human communities. Without excavation records or detailed field notes, a mound in a Kerry townland holds its own counsel. Ballymacthomas itself, as a place name, suggests a connection to a personal name, Mac Tomáis, though what that lineage has to do with the earthwork, if anything, is not recorded in what is currently available.